Monday, December 27, 2010

House Of Dracula (1945)

Genre: Horror,Vampire,Werewolf,Monster

Source: My Own Collection

Grade: B

So last night I decided to watch this and House Of Frankenstein back to back, since in case you didn't know i`m a huge fan of House Of Frankenstein and since this being the sequel to it, that until now I had yet to see, I was pretty excited to watch it. But alas It just could not match the quality or the epicness that House Of Frankenstein held. This was in a way the sequel that was not needed. One of the reasons I believe for it falling short of manging to the quality of other Dracula/Frankenstein sequels was because the great writer Curt Siodmak had no hand in the story. In case your not familiar already with who Curt Siodmak is he was one of the greatest of all the classic horror writers from the Golden Age of Universal Horror. His works would include that of The Wolf Man, I Walked With A Zombie, and Earth Vs The Flying Saucers. He also plotted out the story's to movies like House Of Frankenstein, and Son Of Dracula. But unfortunately his hand in the story is completely void in this movie, and it really shows in my opinion.

I really came into this movie expecting to find out how Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein are alive again. Because in House Of Frankenstein I feel it was pretty well established that they were all killed. But this movie offers no explanation to why they are alive again, I mean other then Frankenstein they all just randomly appear. I was a little disappointed with that this new writer couldn`t come up with a good explanation to why they were alive, so he completely bypassed the problem and just left it like the other movie never happened.
Then I was still let down with the story they had, I noticed it just wasn`t that well developed and seemed they just went with the writers first draft without proofreading it or making any editing to the story what so ever. But this movie did have a first, Larry Talbot aka The Wolf Man has a Mustache! In no other film with the Wolf Man does he have any facial hair, and well its actually good they didn't because the mustache just didn't work for me. But there were some other scenes in the movie that were memorable like when Inspector Holtz who was played by the great Lionel Atwill comes to the doctors lab with three other police officers to arrest the doctor, who then in response goes all crazy and kills all the police officers. Like the doctor throws Lionel Atwills character at a piece of lab machinery which electrocuted him in this super epic scene.

Well overall its not a Horrible movie, its just not nearly as good as other universal horror films. It lacks the story that movies Like House Of Frankenstein and Son Of Frankenstein had. But it does sport a great cast like John Carradine as Dracula, who of course is not nearly as good as Bela Lugosi, but hey he had his own original style for Dracula which I liked. Lon Chaney Jr returns to play the Wolf Man once again in this movie, and then of course there was Lionel Atwill in his traditional Inspector role he always played so well. So like I said earlier not a terrible movie but just can`t even come close in comparison to other classic Universal Horror films.

About Me

Hi, i`m William, I have a deep passion in writing and watching movies which was one of the Main things that inspired me to start this blog. I have a huge appreciation for the classics so there will be plenty of reviews for classic horror. Personally things about myself would include I live in Southern California and i`m a student enrolled in school. And finally if you have an questions go look at my Welcome To Nightmare Blogspot post or post your question for me.
Thanks for reading!
-WILLIAM